It's that time of year when course evaluations for the previous term roll in, and I've been pleasantly surprised by student reflections on my Fall 2013 course, Sex and Sexualities in Modern U.S. History, some articulating the goals of the course even more elegantly than I did:

I think there are some ways in which I previously thought of
sexuality as a private matter between individuals, but this class has
constantly challenged me to think about the multitude of ways in which larger
cultural, economic, political, and religious forces have shaped individual’s sexual
identities, experiences, and choices.

We are interested in graduate student papers that focus on any aspect of religious responses and/or contributions to changing sexual cultures in the United States, from the colonial period to the present. While we expect the conference to generate insights on the sexual revolutions that grew out of the 1960s and 1970s, we also invite submissions that interpret the idea of “sexual revolution” more broadly, to include for example: the sexual politics of new religious movements during the First or Second Great Awakening; religious responses to the “flapper” and “pansy” crazes of the 1920s; or religious voices in the feminist “sex wars” of the 1980s.

We particularly welcome proposals that complicate existing narratives about religious conservatism and sexual politics, that highlight leftist and centrist religious responses to sexual revolution, or that emphasize the contributions and reactions of minority religious communities and new religious movements to shifting sexual cultures and debates.

The conference will be held on Friday, May 9, 2014 at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Graduate students at any institution are invited to submit paper proposals. Limited funding will be available for all speakers. To apply, please submit a paper proposal of no more than 500 words and a current C.V. to rap@wustl.edu by February 28, 2014, with “Religion and Sexual Revolutions” in the subject line.